Commentary and Criticism about the National Education Association
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“A central goal of education is teaching critical-thinking skills. Inquiry-based teaching is an excellent path to this goal… the method focuses on student discovery over pushing information from the instructor.” Erik Kyle, The Phases of Inquiry-Based Teaching “Most people are overwhelmed by the sheer mass of educational fads… virtually all educational trends with any substance are transformed into fads by a flawed or superficial understanding of the basic idea behind the trend … which is unfortunately typically the case in schooling today.” Linda Elder and Richard Paul, Educational Fads INNOVATIVE OR JUST ANOTHER FAD Design Thinking, Project Based Learning, 21st century skills … These are the names of some current educational fads being implemented in schools across the nation. A quote from Pinterest argues for their effectiveness by combining them all in the same sentence: “Design thinking and PBL [Project Based Learning] can bridge what we know and how we innovate. Try combining these two practices as an instructional framework for teaching 21st-century skills.” “Is that statement, with its impressive use of fancy terms that I have never heard before, really true,” wonders the non-educationally-initiated layperson? Maybe. But it also might just be an example of the roll-out of the latest popular approaches to student learning – what I have termed educational “fads.” It seems that every 20 years or so, professionals in the field of education come up with new and “innovative” ways to teach that they swear will improve the learning of students – only to drop them after a few years of trial. For a long list of the educational fads from the past 30 years, check out this list at the Pennington Publishing Blog. Another great list can be found at: The Foundation for Critical Thinking PICK A FAD, ANY FAD: From “Design Thinking” to “Inquiry Learning” Well, last week, the NEA published an article by Mary Ellen Flannery about a new and innovative approach to learning called Design Thinking. I have been looking for an excuse to write about this topic for a while, and now Flannery has provided the opportunity. Let me make clear at the outset that I will not be writing specifically about Design Thinking. Instead, I will be focusing on another related instructional fad called Project Based Inquiry "Learning" (sometimes shortened to just Inquiry "Learning"). They are related. One of the individuals quoted in Flannery’s article, Dan Ryder, acknowledges the relationship when he says of Design Thinking: “It’s more than a new approach or five-step process to problem solving, and more than a 2.0-version of project-based learning.” Others have also noted the connection between the two educational fads. For example, Tom Barrett makes the following comment in an article called Applying Design Thinking in 4 Different Ways in Schools: “However in the school environment the process and principles of design thinking can be applied to a number of different relevant domains [like the] Inquiry Learning Process.” PROJECT BASED INQUIRY SCIENCE (PBIS) I chose to focus on Inquiry “Learning” because my school district is considering the adoption of a science program called Project Based Inquiry Science (PBIS) for its middle school students. To prove my point that Inquiry “Learning” is not appropriate at this grade level, I picked out one particular unit to evaluate - Air Quality. The opening activity for this unit asks the students to pretend they are real scientists working in the field. They are then given ten pictures, each of which shows “an example of a human activity or product that affects air quality.” The goal of this activity is twofold:
So what is the big deal? Well if this activity is just being used as a way to elicit the student’s prior knowledge about the topic of air quality, it is probably OK. There is nothing wrong with getting the students thinking about a topic before you actually teach it. But to tell the kids that this is the way that scientists operate in the real world is completely wrong. THE PROBLEM WITH INQUIRY “LEARNING” – Its backwards. Professional scientists approach things that they encounter in the world with a base of knowledge learned over the course of their long education. Middle school students using PBIS, on the other hand, are being asked to evaluate the world based on their partial (mostly erroneous) “knowledge” and opinion only – they simply do not have any real base knowledge at such a young age. For this reason, asking middle school students to look at pictures and evaluate them as a scientist would is ludicrous. With no real background in the subject, they are not going to be evaluating as a scientist would, they are just going to be guessing. In essence, Inquiry “Learning” reverses the process of learning. The better way to teach students is to introduce the science knowledge first and then have the students use this knowledge to evaluate what they are experiencing. With science knowledge the students can even design experiments based on this knowledge to further their understanding. MY TEST OF INQUIRY “LEARNING”- Spoiler Alert: The kids failed. I showed my 8th grade students the following picture and then asked them to tell me how it might relate to global climate change. I specified that they could only comment on what they actually saw in the picture (for example, no imagining that a gas-powered tractor plowed the fields). Not one student gave a response even close to what would be obvious to any scientist who had basic knowledge about biology and plant processes.
From the Department of Environmental Conservation of New York: “[Through photosynthesis], plants have helped keep CO2 levels from rising excessively because they keep using it to feed themselves. The carbon cycle has a number of self-regulating mechanisms that can compensate for small temporary increases in atmospheric CO2.” My point, yet again, is that students need base knowledge in order to evaluate what they see and experience. To expect them to evaluate something before attaining that base knowledge it to reverse the proper learning process. THE CULPRIT - CONSTRUCTIVISM The inquiry approach to learning is based on an educational paradigm called constructivism. “Constructivism is basically a theory … about how people learn. It says that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. When we encounter something new, we have to reconcile it with our previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new information as irrelevant. In any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge.” I have no doubt that we accumulate knowledge in the real world through this constructivist process. But when a middle school student is learning a specific subject like environmental science that he has no background in (no base knowledge), there is no way to “reconcile it with our previous ideas and experience.” Why? Because he doesn’t have any “previous ideas and experience” regarding the subject matter. He needs to learn something before he can “reconcile it.” CONCLUSION – Not for Middle School When I delved a little deeper into this idea of Design Thinking, I uncovered a guide which explained how to implement it in the classroom. An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE One of the lines in the guide caught my attention, because it encapsulated the reason why Inquiry “Learning” is not real learning. “Framing the right problem is the only way to create the right solution.” Well of course. In order to create a solution, you need to first frame the problem – that makes perfect sense. But if you don’t have any base or background knowledge of a particular issue, how can you possible identify or frame anything at all? You can’t. This is why middle school students need to learn before they evaluate – the opposite approach of Inquiry “Learning.” Design Thinking and Project Based Inquiry "Learning" do have a place in education – but not in elementary or middle school. Children at these lower grade levels simply do not have a sufficient knowledge base upon which to ask the right questions, let alone actually evaluate what they experience. Traditional instruction is more appropriate here.
2 Comments
I would have to politely disagree with the authors. While I appreciate the fact that their solo trial of inquiry based learning failed, I have successfully taught inquiry based learning in my 5th grade classroom for several years. To assume that students need direct knowledge of the exact topic is incredibly limiting. In inquiry learning students inquire or ask questions about and develop hypothesis based on prior knowledge that may connect to the topic. There are no rules in constructivism that limit the prior knowledge to certain topics. Is this not how scientists make new discoveries? According to the authors' suggestion, how could they possibly make new discoveries if the new discovery is yet to be known?
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Greg Monte
10/24/2019 12:32:47 pm
I have been "teaching" PBIS for close to 8 years now. I believe my original article addressed your final question but perhaps I wasn't clear. Scientists who have a background in their fields are certainly capable of making new discoveries because they have the means to ask the relevant questions. Middle school children only have general knowledge about how the world works so can't come up with the relevant questions.
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October 2018
AuthorJonathan Smith - A New Jersey Public School Teacher who disagrees with the National Education Association. |